Disker Du

I want to start off this mornings post with a bit of a public service announcement. There is a big of a troublesome malware circulating through the WoW player community and wreaking havoc with compromised accounts. At this point there is not a lot of absolute hard facts about it. You can check out the full thread on the wow forums for more details. According to support it seems to be occurring on systems that…

Are New or Newly Formatted

New WoW installs

Have Recently Downloaded and Installed Addons

If you follow the rest of the thread there is a lot of blaming going on with the Curse Client again. I do not really believe that this is directly involved as I personally use it and seem to be free of the malware. The worst part about this is that it seems to be really hard to detect. In order to check your own system you need to create an MSInfo file export. You can get into MSInfo by opening a run prompt in windows and typing “MSInfo32”. This will bring up the system diagnostics window, and under the File menu there is an option to Export. Once you have created this file, open it in a text editor like Notepad or my personal favorite choice Notepad++ and search for the string “Disker”.

So far on infected systems they have add the following entries that pop up in the search…

It is presently uncertain how the infection is happening. However there is lots of talk in the wow forum thread about potentially compromised ads on the wowhead website. Others complain that they got it while running the Curse Client. So right now there is just a bunch of speculation. One of the Blizzard forum MVPs Ressie has posted a really great guide for removing it from your system. The virus definition has been sent to the various malware scanner providers so hopefully it will start catching the pattern soon. While this is far from a zero day infection, it has been slipping through the cracks and malware software has been failing to detect it.

I highly suggest you take a moment this morning to create the MSInfo dump file and search it to see if you are infected. Currently this seems to be limited to the WoW Community but due to the nature of the trojan it could in theory compromise many of the authenticator based game clients. So even if you are not a wow player, I suggest you check your system just to make sure.

Junking Continued

Yesterday we did in fact leave town and head up to Muskogee for the purpose of hitting as many of the little junkshops as we could find. In theory we have been mostly looking for a very narrow cabinet to go behind the bathroom door and serve as a jewelry box, and lingerie and scarf storage. We only have about 26 inches to work with, so it is one of those situations where we will know it when we see it. As a result we are doing a lot of looking around. At the local hastings I found the above Tardis Jewelry box that I submitted as an alternative… but my wife didn’t really think that was the best option.

Additionally to this furniture search my wife is always on the lockout for interesting antique jewelry and scarves, whereas I am mostly interested in finding Legos and other interesting toys. While I have not broken into the bag yet, I think I may have found the mother lode or at least the best I have found so far. I don’t have pictures yet, but I will likely post some tomorrow. At one of the junk shops I found a huge bag of Legos. The bag itself is I believe is one of those ziploc “big bags” so far larger than a gallon… filled to the brim with Lego pieces. I got it for $20 and it seems to have the remnants of several sets I remember from the late 80s/early 90s.

Based on the pieces I can see it seems to contain most if not all of the above Lego ship the Caribbean Clipper from 1989. Additionally from what I can tell there seems to be pieces from the pretty epic Black Monarch’s Castle mixed in with it. There might be a few other sets mingled in, but immediate those are the two with iconic pieces that stood out to me. I remembered both sets from my childhood I just did not know them by name until looking them up this morning. At first glance I do not see any minifigures, which would be disappointing but regardless it seemed like a really good deal on some pretty old legos for only $20. We unfortunately are no closer to finding a workable cabinet than we were before we started. However the journey so far has been really enjoyable. Sifting through these junk stores is kinda like going to a really odd hands on museum. I keep snapping photos of the various nifty things we find.

And here are some of the oddities from yesterday…

Early Cartridge System

Not that these will mean much to anyone, but once upon a time there was a dark age of video gaming history ruled by Pong. In the second generation of home gaming systems there was an interesting entry called the RCA Studio II. At face value it was another Pong clone, but it offered the ability to have interchangeable cartridges to play other games. All of these were essentially just as primitive as pong as, but it offered some variety. While I didn’t see the actual Studio II base unit laying around they did have a wide assortment of the cartridges yesterday which was not really something I was expecting to see in a local area junk shop.

Pre-dazzler?

Ronco was notorious for hawking all manner of cheap stuff on the airwaves during the 70s. Apparently one of these was a Rhinestone and Stud setter. While I technically I was born in the 70s I did not remember this product at all. I do however very vividly remember the 80s version of this known as the “bedazzler” which at its core looks like exactly the same machine. So the question is… did is this then the “Pre-dazzler”? I snapped a photo because I think it was quirky, but the absolute best thing is I managed to dig up the original TV commercial on youtube. So much campy 70s goodness. Who wouldn’t want to wear rhinestones on their ass?

Unbearable

The other day I snapped a picture of a really creepy life sized Native American doll that was guarding one of the booths. When I stepped into that booth I literally jumped a little bit. Well it happened again yesterday. Yup you are seeing that right, it is quite literally a bearskin rug, strung out across a bed. From what I could tell it was in fact an actual bear, and not some sort of fake thing. It looked like real taxidermy, and was creepy in so many ways. Kinda makes me a bit sad to see such a pretty animal flayed open like that.

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against hunting, I grew up here in Oklahoma and as a boy scout went through my hunters education class. I know how to shoot a rifle and could go hunting at any given point… I just choose not to. I do however love the taste of “game meats” and appreciate the folks that go out and fetch them for me. I have just never really found the notion of going out and shooting an animal enjoyable. If I faced this in the woods… I would more than likely want to pet it… and wind up mauled horribly.

Something Fruity

This one I just don’t really have words for. I could see having a single wooden pear with a break away section as a conversation piece or for decoration. However why would you ever need three of them? I personally find them fairly ugly, but I find it even more bizarre that someone obviously bought these at one point. You could create some sort of a pear tri-force I guess, and maybe have a Pear-Link try and rescue the Pear-Zelda? I am trying to make sense of this… and failing miserably. I figure we will end up going to a few more places today, so hopefully they give me some equally bizarre blog fodder in the process. I got home around 8 last night, so I really did not have much time to do anything of significance game wise.

Just checked. I’m clean, but I don’t play WoW. I do download mods from Curse, though. To be honest, I think the ones blaming ads are probably on the right track. A tainted ad is one of the easiest ways to infect systems. If they made not easy it to be found, it’s probably either a keylogger or something forcing your computer to assist in DDoS attacks. With the recent attacks on games and streams, my money is on the later.

Seriously, though, thanks for that. Wasn’t planning on installing WoW on the new PC anyway but even if I suddenly change my mind, I’ll hold off until this dies down. The Curse Client has ads as well, so if the Wowhead ad thing could be likely.. yeah.

Also – ha. Bears are awesome. I’d be right there with you getting mauled.Jaedia recently posted..Night Before PC Glee